


Taking Responsibility

by birdzilla



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 13:19:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5667514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdzilla/pseuds/birdzilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sees the human kid every day, hanging out there at his post. And someone's got to be looking out for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taking Responsibility

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the ongoing set of conversations you can get at the security post in the docks in ME3. I am, apparently, a sucker for side-characters.

He wants to do right by this kid.

He figures out the score the first day she shows up at his post, loitering around the desk with an awkward, fidgety optimism that he can’t quite bring himself to crack. He gets her name before she leaves for the night; as soon as she’s gone he pulls up her file, checks her home colony and her rescue transport number, and confirms things for himself. He goes off-shift, hits the firing range, steels himself to tell her what likely happened in the morning, and lies awake all night remembering her hopeful face.

The next day he hesitates, and the next day, and the next. It’s not the turian style to hesitate, but he tells himself that he’s expressing cultural sensitivity—he doesn’t want to do any damage because he doesn’t know human customs. He’s heard that their children need more coddling, right? Even the ones tough enough for bootcamp don’t go until they’re twenty or thereabouts. And if he breaks the news the wrong way, he might do some kind of psychological damage. It’s better to wait and let the human authorities confirm it properly.

But day after day passes, and it looks like the human authorities aren’t going to come. The Citadel administration makes sure she’s fed and housed just like any other human refugee, one number among thousands allocated rations and a bed, but despite her youth, no one is truly caring for her. He’s not sure how humans organize these things. If she was a turian, even if her family was all dead or unreachable, the survivors of her parents’ units would track her down and take care of her. The only humans he’s spent much time with are the ones in C-Sec, who’d all do the same. He doesn’t know what support systems civilian humans even have other than their families. He starts checking in on her every night when he goes off-shift, and he drops off a few things, a blanket and a real mug and plate and a glittery silver jacket, so she has something around that isn’t government-issue charity crap. A couple of times he skips the firing range to head home and do some research on human custody laws, figure out who's supposed to be coming for her.

A week goes by. She’s starting to view him as familiar, he thinks. Now she’s there before he even starts his shift, and he comments to the guy on before him and learns that she shows up just in time to watch and wait as he comes through the door. The next day he smuggles in a pastry from the levo cafe on the Presidium. She smiles brighter than she has since the first day, and he immediately adds the stop to his morning routine.

A month. Her voice cracks now when she talks to him about her parents’ arrival, and he still doesn’t have the heart to make her face what must have happened. She’s coming to it on her own, he figures. He should let her do that. Cultural sensitivity and all. Even when she finally asks him what he thinks, he can only edge around it with platitudes, but he can see reality breaking through in the way her face crumbles.

He can tell hugging would be too public a display, and he can’t figure out the mechanics of doing it over the counter anyway, but he leans against it, and she leans against the far side, and when he puts his hand awkwardly on her shoulder she leans into his forearm and cries. After a few minutes she pulls back and ducks away, hiding her face. Teenagers. Can’t ever let on that they bared that much to adults. Some things seem universal to all species.

As soon as she’s gone, he goes to the desk console and pulls up his personal data cloud. Human law on cross-species adoption is underdeveloped, and mostly focuses on humans adopting non-human orphans, or humans who develop relationships with aliens adopting their preexisting kids. There’s some kind of treaty going with the Council about potentially dangerous human biotics, but that’s about custody rights and responsibilities for supervisory agents, not familial adoptions. It doesn’t look like a turian’s ever directly, personally adopted a human kid. Not much of a surprise, after the Relay 314 Incident. But on the bright side, it doesn’t look like there’s anything in the existing human case law that would prevent it. And the turian government already has comprehensive laws and procedures in place. He thinks he can get this done. He just has to find the right people to talk to, maybe see if he can get his lieutenant to drop a word in Commander Bailey’s ear....

Yeah. He’ll figure it out. He’s gonna do right by this kid.


End file.
